E. B. Tylor.

HISTORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGY

BY

ALFRED C. HADDON,

M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S., Fellow of Christ’s College,

University Reader in Ethnology, Cambridge,

WITH THE HELP OF

A. HINGSTON QUIGGIN,

M.A., formerly of Newnham College, Cambridge

London:

WATTS & CO.,

JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4

Printed in Great Britain

by Watts & Co.,Johnson’s Court,

Fleet Street, London, E.C.4

PREFACE

It is with great diffidence that we offer this little book to the public, it being, so far as we are aware, the first attempt at a history of Anthropology. A book of small size which deals with so vast a subject, comprising, as it does, so many different studies, cannot satisfy the specialists in the several departments. In many branches the investigations are so recent that they can hardly be said to have a history, and in some cases their originators are still alive. Doubtless many will criticise the amount of space allocated to certain authors, and wonder why others have been omitted or have received but scanty recognition. All we can say in extenuation for our selection is that the task has been by no means an easy one, and we have partly been guided by the fact that our readers will mainly be of British nationality. It has been impossible to mention all of the more important of living workers, whether investigators, collectors, or systematisers; but this is not due to any lack of appreciation of their labours. In most cases references are given in the text; a few supplemental works will be found in the Bibliography at the end of the book. The two dates which follow a name refer to the years of the individual’s birth and death; a single date refers to the date of publication of the book or memoir.

We hope we have in all cases referred to the authors to whom we are indebted for information; and for personal assistance we desire to thank Dr. C. S. Myers, of Gonville and Caius College; Mr. E. E. Sikes, Tutor of St. John’s College, Cambridge; and Mr. Edward Clodd.

A. C. H.

October, 1910.

CONTENTS

PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

CHAPTER I

Definition of the word “Anthropology.” Fundamental conceptions. Race discrimination: in Bushman paintings, in the art of ancient Egypt, Assyria, etc., in Vedic literature. Hippocrates. Aristotle. Vesalius. Spigel. Tyson. Pygmies. Linnæus. Buffon. Blumenbach. Monsters and Wild Men.

CHAPTER II.

Craniology: Blumenbach, the founder of Craniology. Camper and the facial angel. Various early craniologists. Retzius and the Cephalic Index. Grattan. Broca. Topinard. De Quatrefages. Virchow. Sergi. Hagen’s and Macalister’s criticisms of craniometry. Anthropometry: White and others. Measurements and observations of living populations: Beddoe. Virchow. Methods of dealing with anthropometrical data: Indices. Averages. Seriations. Curves. Mathematical treatment: Quetelet. Galton. Karl Pearson. Scientific and practical value of anthropometry: In the origin and differentiation of man. Racial history. Heredity. Galton. Miscegenation. The effect of the environment. Test of physical fitness. Identification of criminals. Bertillon. Galton.

CHAPTER III.

Origin of man. Polygenism and Monogenism. Lawrence. Lord Monboddo. Lamarck. Cuvier. Étienne Saint-Hilaire. Robert Chambers: Vestiges of Creation. Herbert Spencer. Darwin: Origin of Species. The negro’s place in nature. James Hunt.

CHAPTER IV.

Fossil man. Cannstadt, Neanderthal, Spy, and other finds. Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo primigenius, Pithecanthropus erectus.

CHAPTER V.

Phrenology. Psychical research. Methods and aims of Psychology. Ethnical psychology. Bastian. Folk psychology. Experimental psychology. Eugenics.

CHAPTER VI.

Race description and classification. Bernier. Linnæus. Blumenbach. Other classifications. Pruner Bey. Bory de S. Vincent. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Haeckel. Broca and Topinard. Flower. Deniker. Keane. Man’s place in nature. Huxley. Vogt.

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

CHAPTER VII.

Definition. Sources. Herodotus. Lucretius. Strabo. Travellers. Missionaries. Systematic works on Ethnology. Prichard. Other generalisations. Ethnology and the Classics. Ethnology and Political Science.

CHAPTER VIII.

Prehistoric man. Flint implements. Denmark. Caves: Oreston. Kirkdale. Liège. Kent’s Cavern. Lake dwellings. Irish crannogs. Swiss pile dwellings. Brixham Cave. Boucher de Perthes. Subsequent progress of Archæology. France. Britain. Germany, etc. Tertiary man. Eoliths.

CHAPTER IX.

Pitt-Rivers. Otis T. Mason. H. Balfour. H. Colley March. Stolpe.

CHAPTER X.

Comparative Ethnology. Tylor. Avebury. Sociology. Comte. Buckle. Herbert Spencer. Bachofen, Morgan, McLennan, and others. Magic and Religion. Anthropology and Religion. Folklore. Comparative Religion.

CHAPTER XI.

The Aryan controversy. Language and Race.

CHAPTER XII.

Gallatin. Wilhelm von Humboldt. Hippocrates. Buffon. Alexander von Humboldt, Ritter, and Waitz. Buckle. Ratzel. Reclus. Le Play.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

In his address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1892 Professor Alexander Macalister made use of a little allegory to illustrate the growth and progress of Anthropology.

“On an irregular and unfenced patch of waste land,” he said, “situated on the outskirts of a small town in which I spent part of my boyhood, there stood a notice-board bearing the inscription, ‘A Free Coup,’ which, when translated into the language of the Southron, conveyed the intimation, ‘Rubbish may be shot here.’ This place, with its ragged mounds of unconsidered trifles, the refuse of the surrounding households, was the favourite playground of the children of the neighbourhood, who found a treasury of toys in the broken tiles and oyster-shells, the crockery and cabbage-stalks, which were liberally scattered round.... Passing by this place ten years later, I found that its aspect had changed; terraces of small houses had sprung up, mushroom-like, on the unsavoury foundation of heterogeneous refuse. Still more recently I notice that these in their turn have been swept away; and now a large factory, wherein some of the most ingenious productions of human skill are constructed, occupies the site of the original waste.”

Here we may recognise the three stages in the progress of the science of Anthropology.

First, a heap of heterogeneous facts and fancies, the leavings of the historian, of the adventurer, of the missionary—the favourite playground of dilettanti of various degrees of seriousness. Next we see order arising out of chaos, and the building-up of a number of superstructures, bearing the signs of transitoriness and imperfection, finally to be replaced by the solid fabric of a coherent whole.

In this little book some of the earlier builders on the scrap-heap will be noted—the Greek philosopher, Aristotle; the Belgian anatomist, Vesalius; the Englishmen, Tyson and Prichard; the Swede, Linnaeus; the Frenchman, Buffon; and the German, Blumenbach. These laid the foundations of the science, and each is claimed as the true founder of Anthropology. After these the workers become more numerous and more specialised, and they will be dealt with under the separate headings of the various branches of the subject in which they laboured, rather than in a continuous chronological order.

“Meddling with questions of merit or priority is a thorny business at the best of times,” as Huxley said; and completeness is not here aimed at. Mention can be made only of those whose work notably contributed to, or illustrates, the historical growth of the science.

It may be objected that too much attention has been given to the arm-chair workers, and too little to the labourers in the field. This is true, especially in the section on Ethnology; but it is necessitated by the compass of the volume. We attempt a brief sketch of the wood, and cannot stop to describe the individual trees that compose it. Detailed investigations, however valuable, have to be merged into generalisations; and generalisations proceed mainly from the arm-chairs.

Professor Michael Foster somewhere remarked that “hypothesis is the salt of science.” The main difficulty with which observers in the field have to contend is that, as a rule, they can see only what they look for. When an investigator has left his field and is working up his results at home, he only too frequently finds that he has omitted to look for certain customs or beliefs, whose occurrence in other places he had either over-looked or forgotten. This is the justification for the questionnaires. It is one of the most important functions of stay-at-home synthetic students laboriously to cull data from the vast literature of anthropology, travel, and ancient and modern history, and to weld them into coherent hypotheses. The student at home in this way suggests fresh inquiries to the field ethnologist, and a richer harvest is the result. The most valuable generalisations are made, however, when the observer is at the same time a generaliser; but “doubtless,” as Maharbal said to Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, “the gods have not bestowed everything on the same man. You, Hannibal, know how to conquer; but you do not know how to use your victory.”

The vastness of the anthropological sciences and the nebulous character of their demarcation from other sciences render their definition or classification a peculiarly difficult matter. Even at the present day students are not agreed upon the exact terminology and limitations of the various branches of their subject; but, after all, these are little more than academic discussions, since investigations go on irrespective of boundary lines. Those who are really worried about this “terminological inexactitude” are the cataloguers and librarians, who frequently are at a loss where to place items in their catalogues or books on their shelves. It was mainly from this point of view that Dieserud was constrained to write his Science of Anthropology: Its Scope and Content.[^[1]] This useful little book deals very fully in historical order with the questions referred to above, and it may be recommended to those who are interested in these somewhat profitless discussions.

[1]. This is the title on the back of the book. Its designation on the title-page is given correctly in the Bibliography.

For the convenience of those who require landmarks we here give the scheme that is roughly followed in this book, which is based upon the classification recently proposed by the Board of Studies in Anthropology of the University of London as a guide for the study and teaching of Anthropology:—

A.—Physical Anthropology (Anthropography, Anthropology of some writers)

(a) Zoological (somatology, including craniology, etc.).—Man’s place in Nature as evidenced by the study of comparative anatomy and physiology, more especially of the Anthropoidea.

(b) Palæontological.—The antiquity of man as evidenced by fossil and semi-fossilised remains, including the geological evidence.

(c) Physiological and Psychological.—The comparative study of the bodily functions and mental processes.

(d) Ethnological.—The comparative study of the physical characters which distinguish the various races and sub-races of man. Classification of the human race in accordance with physical and psychical characters. Geographical distribution of the varieties of mankind. The influence of environment on physique.

B.—Cultural Anthropology (Ethnology of some writers).

(a) Archæological.—The antiquity of man as revealed by the earliest remains of his handiwork. The prehistoric periods; their characteristics, sequence, and duration. The survival of early conditions of culture in later times (Folklore).

(b) Technological.—The comparative study of arts and industries; their origin, development, and geographical distribution.

(c) Sociological.—The comparative study of social phenomena and organisation. Birth, education, marriage, and death customs and systems. Social and religious associations. Government and laws. Moral ideas and codes. Magical and religious ideas and practices.

(d) Linguistic.—The comparative study of language.

(e) Ethnological.—The comparative study and classification of peoples based upon cultural conditions and characteristics. The influence of environment upon culture.

Chapter I.

THE PIONEERS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Definition of the word “Anthropology.”

Aristotle, “the father of them that know,” as Dante called him, is credited with having coined the word “anthropologist”; but he did not employ it in a very complimentary sense. Describing a lofty-minded man in his Ethics, he terms him ουκ ανθρωπολογος—not a gossip, not a talker about himself. But the word does not seem to have supplied a permanent want in the Greek world, and we meet it next in a Latin form in the sixteenth century. Anthropologium was then used in a restricted sense, relating to man’s bodily structure; and the first work in which it occurs is generally stated to be Magnus Hundt’s Anthropologium de hominis dignitate, which appeared in 1501, and dealt in a general way with human anatomy and physiology.

The first appearance of the word in English was probably in the seventeenth century, when an anonymous book was published bearing the title Anthropologie Abstracted; or, The idea of Humane nature reflected in briefe Philosophicall and anatomical collections (1655). The author defines his subject thus:—

Anthropologie, or the history of human nature, is, in the vulgar (yet just) impression, distinguished into two volumes: the first entitled Psychologie, the nature of the rational soule discoursed; the other anatomie, or the fabrick or structure of the body of man revealed in dissection ... of the former we shall in a distracted rehersall, deliver our collections.[^[2]]

[2]. See Bendyshe, p. 356.

The meaning of the word was scarcely clear in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when we find, in the British Encyclopædia of 1822, the following definitions, “A discourse upon human nature,” and “Among Divines, that manner of expression by which the inspired writers attribute human parts and passions to God.”

Concerning the present use of the term “Anthropology,” few will take exception to the definition given by Topinard in his l’Anthropologie (1876): “Anthropology is the branch of natural history which treats of man and the races of man.” It may be yet more succinctly described as “the science of man,” which comprises two main divisions—the one which deals with the natural man (ανθρωπος, or homo); the other which is concerned with man in relation to his fellows, or, in other words, with social man (εθνορ, or socius). At the end of the Introduction we give the classification which we propose to adopt. It should, however, be stated that, whereas in this country we employ the term “Anthropology” to cover the whole subject, it is common on the Continent to restrict the term to what we designate as “Physical Anthropology,” “Anthropography,” or “Somatology.”

Fundamental Conceptions.

The beginnings of anthropology may probably be traced to what Professor Giddings (1896) has termed the “consciousness of kind,” but what Dr. McDougall (1898) has more definitely recognised as showing the gregarious impulse. He says (pp. 299-300):—

The gregarious impulse of any animal receives satisfaction only through the presence of animals similar to itself, and the closer the similarity the greater is the satisfaction.... Just so, in any human being the instinct operates most powerfully in relation to, and receives the highest degree of satisfaction from the presence of, the human beings who most closely resemble that individual, those who behave in like manner and respond to the same situations with similar emotions.

Andree, Parallelen. N. r. Tafel. III.
Bushmen Raiding Kafir Cattle.
(After R. Andree.)

Race Portraiture of the Ancient Egyptians
on the tombs of the Kings at Biban-el-Molouk (XVIIIth-XXIst Dynasty).

Race Discrimination.

The recognition of degrees of likeness implies the recognition of unlikeness. This may be termed the stage of race discrimination. Ancient literature and the pictorial art of certain uncivilised peoples abound in examples of race discrimination. The crude representations of human beings discovered in caves in France and elsewhere were probably intended to portray the people themselves, who lived in the palæolithic period. These drawings or carvings, like those of most modern savages, exhibit much greater skill in delineating animals than human beings; consequently it is dangerous to rely on them as representing the physical characteristics of the then existing populations. Very different is the famous Bushman pictograph of a fight between Bushmen and Kafirs. Here relative size, the difference in colour, and the employment of different implements of war by these two races, are strikingly exemplified; but as a general rule the Bushmen themselves exaggerate certain features and minimise others—for example, the head is invariably too small and featureless.

In Egypt there is an immense amount of pictorial and sculptured material for ethnological study, covering a range of many centuries. Over three thousand years ago the artists—“untrained but not unobservant ethnologists”[^[3]]—decorated the walls of royal tombs with representations of the four races of mankind, among whom the Egyptians of the nineteenth dynasty supposed the world to be partitioned—(1) The Egyptians, whom they painted red; (2) the Asiatics or Semites, yellow; (3) the Southerns or Negroes, black; and (4) the Westerns or Northerners, white, with blue eyes and fair beards. Each type is clearly differentiated by peculiar dress and characteristic features. In addition to these four types, other human varieties were delineated by the Ancient Egyptians, most of which can be identified. “On the Egyptian monuments we not only find very typical portraits, but also an attempt at classification; for the Egyptians were a scientific people, with a knowledge of medicine, and also skilled mathematicians; therefore their primitive anthropology is not unexpected.”[^[4]] This facility for race discrimination was still earlier exhibited in the prehistoric or early historic slate palettes of Egypt.

[3]. D. Randall-Maciver and A. Wilkin, Libyan Notes, 1901, p. 1.

[4]. Man, viii., 1908, p. 129.

Belonging to the fifth century B.C. are the realistic portraiture figurines in pottery discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie at Memphis,[^[5]] “which clearly are copied from various races which were welded together by the Persians, and who all met in the foreign settlement at Memphis.” Professor Petrie identifies Sumerians or Accadians, the old Turanian people who started civilisation in Babylonia. “Their heads are identified by closely similar portraits carved in stone about 3000 B.C., and found in Mesopotamia.” Persians, Scythians, Mongols, and even Indians, are also recognised by him; but some of the latter are dated by him at about 200 B.C.

[5]. Poole, l.c.

Assyrian monuments are less explicit in this respect.

The Assyrians themselves are shown to have been of a very pure type of Semites; but in the Babylonians there is a sign of Cushite blood.... There is one portrait of an Elamite (Cushite) king on a vase found at Susa; he is painted black, and thus belongs to the Cushite race. The Ethiopian type can be clearly seen in the reliefs depicting the Assyrian wars with the kings of Ethiopia; but it is hard to discriminate Arabs and Jews from Assyrians; in fact, it is only in the time of good art that distinctions are traceable.[^[6]]

[6]. H. H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary, i., 1892, p. xxxviii.

Rock carvings in Persia, Scythian coins, and numerous other monuments and remains from other countries and belonging to diverse ages, illustrate that the head-form, features, character of the hair and mode of wearing it, ornaments, dress, and weapons, were all recognised as means of discriminating between different peoples from the earliest times.

Ancient literature, of which one example must suffice, tells the same tale:—

The sense of differences of colour, which, for all our talk of common humanity, still plays a great and, politically, often an inconvenient part in the history of the world, finds forcible expression in the Vedic descriptions of the people whom the Aryans found in possession of the plains of India. In a well-known passage the god Indra is praised for having protected the Aryan colour, and the word meaning colour (varna) is used down to the present day as the equivalent of caste, more especially with reference to the castes believed to be of Aryan descent.[^[7]]

[7]. Report Brit. Assoc., 1881, p. 683.

The word “caste” is of Portuguese origin. In the 179th hymn of the first Mandala of the Rig-Veda, as Dr. Gerson da Cunha points out,[^[8]] the word varna is used in the dual number, ubhau varnau, “two colours,” white of the Aryans and black of the Dasyus—that is, of the “Dravidian” aborigines, who are elsewhere called “black-skinned,” “unholy,” “excommunicated.” Other texts dwell on their low stature, coarse features, and their voracious appetite. The Rig-Veda employs the word anâsa—“noseless”—to characterise the Dasyus and Daityas, which designations mean “thieves” or “demons.” It is hardly an exaggeration to say that from these sources there might be compiled a fairly accurate anthropological definition of the jungle tribes of to-day.

[8]. “Presidential Address: The Nasal Index in Biological Anthropology,” Journ. Anth. Soc. of Bombay, 1892, p. 542.

Thus were the foundations of descriptive anthropology unconsciously laid.

In our own day racial characters are seized upon in the same manner, and racial antipathy adds fuel to its own fire in regarding traits which differ from those of the speaker or writer as being ugly, objectionable, or of low type. “The study of race,” said the late Sir William Flower (1831-1899), “is at a low ebb indeed when we hear the same contemptuous epithet of ‘nigger’ applied indiscriminately by the English abroad to the blacks of the West Coast of Africa, to Kafirs of Natal, the Lascars of Bombay, the Hindoos of Calcutta, the aborigines of Australia, and even the Maories of New Zealand.”[^[9]] The Englishman who contemns as a “nigger” any dark-skinned native has not advanced in race discrimination beyond his remote kinsman who crossed into the valley of the Indus some four thousand years ago.

[9]. Report Brit. Assoc., 1881, p. 683.

Hippocrates.

Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.), “the Father of Physic,” was certainly a pioneer in physical anthropology. He says: “I will pass over the smaller differences among nations, but will now treat of such as are great either from nature or custom; and, first, concerning the macrocephali. There is no other race of men which have heads in the least resembling theirs.” He believed that this elongated conformation of the head was originally produced artificially; but subsequently it was inherited, or, as he puts it: “Thus, at first usage operated, so that this constitution was the result of force; but in the course of time it was formed naturally, so that usage had nothing to do with it”—a view adopted many centuries later by Buffon and others.

Aristotle.

Not only was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the first authority to make use of the word “anthropology,”[^[10]] but he may also be described as an anthropologist. Material had been collected by travellers, such as Hanno, the Carthaginian, who encountered gorillas in Africa; by historians, such as Herodotus (who was also a traveller); and by doctors, such as Hippocrates. Aristotle was indebted to some extent to all of these; but his vast works in natural history were based mainly on what he considered of primary importance—facts of actual personal knowledge derived from personal observation. On this account alone his writings deserved the place which they held for many centuries.

[10]. Cf. p. 6.

Thus, undisturbed by the dogmas of religion or philosophy, he placed man naturally among the animals (being thus, as Topinard remarks, about twenty centuries ahead of humanity), but distinguished from them by certain features—by the relative size of the brain, by two-leggedness, by mental characters, etc. Some writers regard it as improbable that either Hippocrates or Aristotle had ever dissected the human body, but it is also possible to hold an opposite view. Even Galen (c. 130 A.D.), whose anatomy held the field for more than a thousand years, had to base his conclusions on the bodies of animals, notably on those of monkeys; and, although he did not conceal the fact, it was not until the time of Vesalius that the discrepancy between simian and human anatomy was discovered.

Vesalius.

Vesalius (1513-1564) is the next great name in the history of physical anthropology. He was Professor of Anatomy at Padua, Bologna, and Pisa, and physician to Charles V. and Philip II. His work marks a revolution in anatomical science; for not only did he overthrow the doctrines which had been accepted for fourteen centuries, demonstrating that to a great extent Galen had studied the anatomy of the ape rather than that of man, but, by his own deductions from direct observation and original research, he established a fresh and unassailable foundation for future investigation. His services to anatomy have been compared to those of Galileo and Copernicus in the field of astronomy. His fate was not unlike that of many other daring pioneers of the Middle Ages. He was accused of having dissected a man while yet alive, and was dragged by his enemies before the Inquisition and condemned to death. By the intercession of the king his sentence was commuted into a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre; but on his return journey he was shipwrecked and drowned off the island of Zante.

Cunningham, in his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1908, refers to the work of Vesalius, whom he describes as one of the most remarkable figures in the sixteenth century. He adds:—

It is interesting to note in passing that certain racial distinctions did not escape the eye of Vesalius. “It appears,” he remarks, “that most nations have something peculiar in the shape of the head. The crania of the Genoese, and, still more remarkable, those of the Greeks and Turks, are globular in form. This shape, which they esteem elegant and well adapted to their practice of enveloping the head in the folds of their turbans, is often produced by the midwives at the solicitation of the mother.” He further observes “that the Germans had generally a flattened occiput and broad head, because the children are always laid on their backs in the cradles; and that the Belgians have a more oblong form, because the children are allowed to sleep on their sides.”

We know that more or less continuous pressure is exerted on the pliable heads of infants to produce admired shapes, but the theory was carried rather too far when adduced, some centuries later, to account for the facial features of negroes. Lawrence, in his Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, attributed the flat noses and thick lips of the negro to the method of carrying babies in Africa. The negro mothers, while at work, carry their infants on their backs, and “in the violent motions required for their hard labour, as in beating or pounding millet, the face of the child is said to be constantly thumping against the back of the mother.” By this rude treatment the face of the negro child was supposed to be moulded into shape; but, as Cunningham points out, no attempt was made to explain how the process of bumping produced exactly opposite results in the case of the nose and lips—reducing the prominence of the former and increasing the projection of the latter.

Spigel.

“The invention of the ‘lineæ cephalometricæ’ of Spigel, who died in the early part of the seventeenth century, may perhaps be regarded as constituting the earliest scientific attempt at cranial measurement.” He drew four lines in certain directions, and a skull in which these lines were equal to each other he regarded as regularly proportioned. “Although these lines are evidently not sufficient for the comparative ethnography of the present day, yet it is interesting to observe that, in ascending the zoological scale, these lines approximate equality just in proportion as the head measured approaches the human form.”[^[11]]

[11]. J. Aitken Meigs, North American Med.-Chir. Rev., 1861, p. 840.

Tyson.

Johann Sperling, author of a Physica anthropologia (1668), and Samuel Haworth, who wrote Anthropologia; or A philosophical discourse concerning man (1680), also belong to the seventeenth century. But more important is the work of Edward Tyson, a Cambridge man, who took his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1678. He was a Fellow, and later Censor, of the College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal Society, and writer of numerous papers on anatomy. His fame rests mainly on the work which laid the foundations of comparative morphology, Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or The Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man (1699). This was the first attempt to deal with the anatomy of any of the anthropoid apes, and shows very conspicuous ability on the part of the author. He compared the structure of man with that of the monkeys, and came to the conclusion that the pygmy formed a kind of intermediate animal between the two. The pygmy was, as a matter of fact, a chimpanzee, and its skeleton, which was thus early recognised as the “missing link,” is still to be seen in the Natural History Museum (British Museum) at South Kensington. Tyson added to his work on the Anatomy of the Pygmie, A Philological Essay, Concerning the Pygmies, the Cynocephali, the Satyrs, and Sphinges of the Ancients. Wherein it will appear that they are all either Apes or Monkeys, and not Men as formerly pretended. The purpose of the Essay may be expressed in his own words:—

If therefore I can make out ... that there were such Animals as Pygmies; and that they were not a Race of Men, but Apes; and can discover the Authors, who have forged all, or most of the idle Stories concerning them; and shew how the Cheat in after Ages has been carried on, by embalming the Bodies of Apes, then exposing them for the Men of the Country, from whence they brought them: If I can do this, I shall think my time not wholly lost, nor the trouble altogether useless, that I have had in this Enquiry.

The Pygmies.

This was the first attempt to explain in a rational fashion the innumerable tales found in all parts of the world about the existence of pygmy races, ape-men or men-apes. Tyson’s hypothesis was that all these legends were based on imperfect observations of apes, and he was followed by Buffon and others. It may be well here briefly to note the researches which have led in late years to the opposite conclusion—i.e., that the tales relate to a dwarf race of men formerly very widely spread over the globe.

This theory is mainly associated with the name of de Quatrefages (1810-1892). In the Introduction to his book on the pygmies he says: “For a long time past the small black races have attracted my attention and my interest in a special manner.” His earliest investigations of the subject were published in 1862, and continued until 1887. Analysing the evidence, he shows that the two localities where the ancients appear to place their pygmies (the interior of Africa and the southern-most parts of Asia), together with the characters assigned to them, indicate an actual knowledge of the two groups of small people (Negrilloes and Negritoes), who are still to be found in those regions. Professor J. Kollmann, of Basel, in his Pygmäen in Europa (1894), argues for the existence of a European pygmy race in Neolithic times from some remains found at Schaffhausen, and the wide prevalence of short statures among many peoples in Europe, especially in the south. Mr. David MacRitchie attributes not only legends of pygmies, but fairy-tales in general, to this prehistoric dwarf race. President Windle sums up the question thus:—

It is possible with more or less accuracy and certainty to identify most of those races which, described by the older writers, had been rejected by their successors. Time has brought their revenge to Aristotle and Pliny by showing that they were right, where Tyson, and even Buffon, were wrong. (P. liii.)

In the time of Aristotle Man took his place naturally at the head of the other animals, being distinguished from the brutes by certain characters. But the influence of religion and of philosophy did not long permit of this association. Man came to be regarded as the chef d’œuvre of creation, a thing apart, a position aptly described in the words of Saint Paul (marginal version) “for a little while inferior to the angels.”

In the eighteenth century came a startling change. Man was wrenched from this detached and isolated attitude, and linked on once more to the beasts of the field. This was the work of Linnæus.

Linnæus.

The year 1707 is memorable in the history of Anthropology as the date of the birth of two of its greatest men, Linnæus[^[12]] (1707-1778) and Buffon (1707-1788). Both devoted long lives to science, and both produced monumental works of permanent value; but it would be hard to find two contemporary figures engaged in the same pursuit whose lives presented a greater contrast.

[12]. By a patent of nobility conferred in 1757 Linnæus became Karl von Linné.

Linnæus was the son of a poor pastor, and his mother was the daughter of the former pastor of the same small Swedish parish. At the early age of four young Karl is said to have taken an interest in botany, and to have begun to ask questions that his father could not answer. Either to escape this interrogation, or for wiser motives, the father made it a rule never to answer the same question twice, and to this early discipline Linnæus used to trace his tenacious memory. The boy was intended for the ministry, and was early sent to school; but, as he devoted all his time to botany, his progress in theology was nil, and when, after two years, his father visited the school, and learnt of the disappointing result of all the pinching and saving which had gone to provide for the son’s education, he resolved to apprentice him to a tailor or shoemaker in hopes of obtaining a better return for his outlay. Fortunately a friend intervened, and gave the boy board and lodging, besides private tuition, while he finished his gymnasium course. His work as a student seems to have failed to satisfy his instructors, for when he proceeded to the University of Lund it was with the enigmatic testimonial to the effect that “some shrubs in a garden may disappoint the cares of the gardener, but if transplanted into different soil may prosper.”

When barely twenty-two he left Lund for Upsala, taking with him his entire fortune of £8, and, being inexperienced and unknown, soon found himself in desperate straits. He was rescued by the generosity of Dr. Celsius, a professor of theology, but student of botany, who, impressed with Karl’s collections and enthusiasm, offered him board and lodging, and obtained for him some private pupils. The hardships of his life were not yet over, but gradually his work obtained recognition, abroad sooner than at home, and he could have lived at his ease in England or the Netherlands; only (as he expressed it), “his Sara was in Sweden,” and he returned to his native land to scrape together sufficient means to marry her.

Buffon.

From the beginning Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was marked out for a different life. His father was a Burgundian Councillor, and his mother, besides being an heiress, was a woman of unusual ability. He was originally destined for the law, but his tastes always inclined towards science, and he soon found occasion to follow them.

He made the acquaintance of a young Englishman of rank and of his tutor, who was a man of science, and with them he travelled on the continent. About the same time Linnæus was also travelling, but in a different fashion. He set out to make explorations in Lapland, then very little known, carrying his luggage on his back, and covered nearly 5,000 miles at a cost of about £25. During his travels he kept a diary[^[13]] of his observations, which contains not only botanical but also ethnological information of great value.

[13]. See Globus, “Linné als Ethnologe,” xci., 1907.

While Linnæus was living from hand to mouth, depending for his food on chance generosity, and mending his boots with folded paper, Buffon was living the gay life of the young men of his age and rank, and we hear of him being forced to flee to Paris to escape the results of wounding an Englishman in a gaming quarrel. (Linnæus was also guilty of drawing his sword in anger, but the provocation was different. During his absence from Upsala a rival had, by private influence, contrived to get a prohibition put on all private lecturing in the University, and he returned to find all his means of livelihood suddenly cut off.)

Nevertheless Buffon’s life of pleasure did not occupy all his energies. He possessed, as Voltaire said, “l’âme d’un sage dans le corps d’un athlête,” and while in Paris he wrote and translated various scientific works, was elected a member of the Academy of Science, and in 1739 was appointed keeper of the Jardin du Roi and of the Royal Museum.

The permanent value to Anthropology of the work of these two men lies in the fact that they both “saw life steadily, and saw it whole.” But they produced results not only distinct, but, in some respects, antagonistic. Buffon, as Topinard says, did not classify, he described; and the value of his work has been very differently appraised. Cuvier had small opinion of it. Camper and Saint-Hilaire considered the author the greatest naturalist of modern times, the French Aristotle. Topinard (1885, p. 33) thus describes the opinion of the public: “Le public, lui, n’hésita pas; dans l’Histoire naturelle des animaux il sentit un souffle nouveau, vit un pressentiment de l’avenir. La libre pensée était dans l’air, 89 approchait; l’œuvre de Buffon, comme l’Encyclopédie, Voltaire, Rousseau et Bougainville, contribua à la Révolution française.”

The genius of Linnæus lay in classification. Order and method were with him a passion. In his Systema Naturæ he fixed the place of Man in Nature, arranging Homo sapiens as a distinct species in the order Primates,[^[14]] together with the apes, the lemurs, and the bats. He went further and classified the varieties of man, distinguishing them by skin colour and other characters into four groups—a classification which holds an honourable place at the present day.

[14]. The tenth edition, 1758, is the first in which the order Primates occurs. Earlier editions have the order Anthropomorpha. See Bendyshe, p. 424.

All this was abominable in the eyes of Buffon. “Une vérité humiliante pour l’homme, c’est qu’il doit se ranger lui-même dans la classe des animaux”; and in another place he exclaims: “Les genres, les ordres, les classes, n’existent que dans notre imagination.... Ce ne sont que des idées de convention.... Il n’y a que des individus!” And again: “La nature ne connait pas nos definitions; elle n’a jamais rangé ses ouvrages par tas, ni les êtres par genres.”

Nevertheless both rendered incalculable service to the science. Linnæus “found biology a chaos and left it a cosmos.” “L’anthropologie,” says Flourens, “surgit d’une grande pensée de Buffon; jusqu-là l’homme n’avait été étudié que comme individu, Buffon est le premier qui l’ait envisagé comme espèce.”

But Buffon was no believer in the permanent stability of species. “Nature is far from subjecting herself to final causes in the formation of her creatures.” He went so far as to make a carefully veiled hint (the Sorbonne having eyes on him) of a possible common ancestor for horse and ass, and of ape and man. At least, he says, so one should infer from their general resemblance; but, since the Bible affirms the contrary, “of course the thing cannot be.”[^[15]] In 1751 the old naturalist was constrained by the Sorbonne to recant his geological heresies in these words: “I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the Creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact.”

[15]. Quoted from Clodd’s Pioneers of Evolution, 1897, p. 101.

J. F. Blumenbach

Blumenbach.

It was fortunate for the nascent science that the next great name on its roll was that of a man of very wide reading, endowed with remarkable reasoning powers, and with an exceptional perspicuity for sifting out the true from the false.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) was Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Göttingen, and early turned his attention to the special study of man. He was the first to place anthropology on a rational basis, and in his De generis humani varietate nativa (1775-1795) laid the foundations of race classification based on measurement. He noted the variations in the shape of the skull and of the face, and may therefore be regarded as the founder of craniology (see below, p. [28]). Besides the services rendered by Blumenbach to the science of anthropology in classification and in laying the foundations of craniology, there was a third field in which his work was perhaps even more valuable to his contemporaries.

Monsters.

Every successive age is astonished at the credulity of its predecessor; but when we remember the grave difficulties which beset the explorer in the eighteenth century, and the wild “travellers’ tales” which it was impossible either to verify or to disprove, it is easy to sympathise with the credence given to the beliefs in “Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.” Tyson, in his Philological Essay, gives a list, chiefly derived from classical writers, of the “monstrous Productions,” belief in which had not altogether died out in the seventeenth century. In fact, it was not long before Tyson’s time that a distinguished naturalist had given a serious description of the mermen who lived in the sea and had their hinder parts covered with scales.[^[16]] Tyson’s account of “Monstrous sorts of Men” is taken mainly from Strabo:—

[16]. v. Cunningham, p. 24.

Such are the Amukteres or Arrhines, that want Noses, and have only two holes above their Mouth; they eat all things, but they must be raw; they are short lived; the upper part of their Mouths is very prominent. The Enotokeitai, whose Ears reach down to their Heels, on which they lye and sleep. The Astomoi, that have no Mouths—a civil sort of People, that dwell about the Head of the Ganges; and live upon smelling to boil’d Meats and the Odours of Fruits and Flowers; they can bear no ill scent, and therefore can’t live in a Camp. The Monommatoi or Monophthalmoi, that have but one Eye, and that in the middle of their Foreheads: they have Dogs’ Ears; their Hair stands on end, but smooth on the Breasts. The Sternophthalmoi, that have Eyes in their Breasts. The Panai sphenokephaloi with Heads like Wedges. The Makrokephaloi, with great Heads. The Huperboreoi, who live a Thousand years. The Okupodes, so swift that they will out-run a Horse. The Opisthodaktuloi, that go with their Heels forward, and their Toes backwards. The Makroskeleis, the Steganopodes, the Monoskeleis, who have one Leg, but will jump a great way, and are call’d Sciapodes, because when they lye on their Backs, with this Leg they can keep the Sun from their bodies.

Wild Men.

Linnæus did not include these in his Homo Monstrosus; but various questionable creatures are inserted by his pupil Hoppius in the treatise Anthropomorpha of Linnæus, read in 1760.[^[17]] Such were the Satyr of Vulpius, who, “when it went to bed, put its head on the pillow, and covered its shoulders with the counterpane, and lay quite quiet like a respectable woman”; Lucifer (Homo caudatus), the “dreadful foul animals—running about like cats,” who rowed in boats, attacked and killed a boatload of adventurers, cooking and eating their bodies; and the Troglodyta (Homo nocturnus), who in the East Indies “are caught and made use of in houses as servants to do the lighter domestic work—as to carry water, lay the table, and take away the plates.” But all these were classed among the Simiæ. Within the species Homo sapiens Linnæus included wild or natural man, Homo sapiens ferus, whose existence was widely believed in at the time. The most authentic case was that of “Wild Peter,” the naked brown boy discovered in 1724 in Hanover. He could not speak, and showed savage and brutish habits and only a feeble degree of intelligence. He was sent to London, and, under the charge of Dr. Arbuthnot, became a noted personage, and the subject of keen discussion among philosophers and naturalists. One of his admirers, more enthusiastic than the others, declared that his discovery was more important than that of Uranus, or the discovery of thirty thousand new stars.

[17]. Bendyshe, p. 447.

Blumenbach alone, apparently, took the trouble to investigate the origin of Wild Peter, and in the article he wrote on the subject disposed for all time of the belief in the existence of “natural man.” He pointed out that when Peter was first met he wore fastened round his neck the torn fragments of a shirt, and that the whiteness of his thighs, as compared with the brown of his legs, showed that he had been wearing breeches and no stockings. He finally proved that Peter was the dumb child of a widower, who had been thrust out of his home by a new step-mother.[^[18]]

[18]. Cunningham, pp. 24-5.

Chapter II.

THE SYSTEMATISERS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Hitherto we have been dealing with the great pioneers in Anthropology, those who laid the foundations, brought order out of chaos, and suggested the outlines of future work. Henceforward Anthropology may claim the name of a science, and the work developed on definite lines. It will be more convenient to treat these separately, abandoning a strict chronological method.

The first branch to attract workers was Somatology, the physical aspect of man, of which we have already noted the inception: not until the nineteenth century can Archæology, or Prehistoric Anthropology, be said to have developed into a science; while the scientific study of Ethnology, or Cultural Anthropology, is barely half a century old.

Craniology.

Norma Verticalis of Blumenbach.

Somatology had already been foreshadowed by Vesalius, Spigel, and Linnæus; but Blumenbach was the first to strike its keynote by recording the shape of the skull and of the face. He was the fortunate possessor of a large number of skulls—large, that is, for his time, and he published a description of them (1790-1820), Decas collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustrata, with 70 plates. He noted particularly the norma verticalis—i.e., the shape of the skull as seen from above, distinguishing by its means three types—the square shape of the Mongols, the narrow or “pressed in from the sides” shape of the Negroes, and the intermediate form which he recognised in the “Caucasians.” He was the first to popularise craniology, and “it became the fashion to visit the Blumenbachian Museum, to have the differences which distinguish the different cranial types pointed out, and to indulge in sentimental rhapsodies upon the beauty and symmetry of the young female Georgian skull, which was considered to represent the highest type of all.”[^[19]] But Blumenbach does not seem to have taken advantage of his own discoveries. In choosing the norma verticalis as a racial criterion he made a valuable contribution to science, but he did not reproduce his normæ in his plates, nor did he base his classification on them. Indeed, his typical Caucasian skull is really squarer than his typical Mongolian.

[19]. Cunningham, p. 26.

Upper and Side Views of Skulls of Men
belonging to the Neolithic and Bronze Age Races; photographed by the Author from specimens in the Cambridge Anatomical Museum.
A, Long Barrow, Dinnington, Rotherham. Length, 204 mm.; breadth, 143 mm.; cranial index, 70. 1.
B, Winterbourne Stoke. Length, 177 mm.; breadth, 156 mm.; cranial index, 88. 1.

Facial Angle of Camper.

Peter Camper (1722-1789) had already been studying head-form, though from a totally different standpoint, and his deductions were not published until after his death.

His contributions to Anthropology were an essay on the Physical Education of the Child, a lecture on The Origin and Colour of the Negro, and a treatise on The Orang-outang and some other species of Apes; but only his work on the facial angle has attained permanent fame. His early inclinations were towards art, and he was carefully trained in drawing, painting, and architecture; and it was in the interests of Art, not of Anthropology, that the researches which resulted in his determination of the facial angle came to be undertaken. This he describes in his preface to his lectures:—

At the age of eighteen, my instructor, Charles Moor the younger, to whose attention and care I am indebted for any subsequent progress I may have made in this art, set me to paint one of the beautiful pieces of Van Tempel, in which there was the figure of a negro, that by no means pleased me. In his colour he was a negro, but his features were those of a European. As I could neither please myself nor gain any proper directions, I desisted from the undertaking. By critically examining the prints taken from Guido Reni, C. Marat, Seb. Ricci, and P. P. Rubens, I observed that they, in painting the countenances of the Eastern Magi, had, like Van Tempel, painted black men, but they were not Negroes.

To obtain the necessary facial effects distinguishing the Negro from the European, Camper devised his system of measurements. He drew a line from the aperture of the ear to the base of the nose, and another from the line of the junction of the lips (or, in the case of a skull, from the front of the incisor teeth) to the most prominent part of the forehead. “If,” he said, “the projecting part of the forehead be made to exceed the 100th degree, the head becomes mis-shapen and assumes the appearance of hydrocephalus or watery head. It is very surprising that the artists of Ancient Greece should have chosen precisely the maximum, while the best Roman artists have limited themselves to the 95th degree, which is not so pleasing. The angle which the facial or characteristic line of the face makes,” he continued, “varies from 70 to 80 degrees in the human species. All above is resolved by the rules of art; all below bears resemblance to that of apes. If I make the facial line lean forward, I have an antique head; if backward, the head of a Negro. If I still more incline it, I have the head of an ape; and if more still, that of a dog, and then that of an idiot.”

Camper’s facial angle may be of service to Art, but since the points from which the lines are drawn are all variable, owing to the disturbing influence of other factors, such as an increased length of face or an unusually prominent brow-ridge, it cannot form an accurate measurement for Anthropology. It was severely criticised by Blumenbach, Lawrence, and Prichard, but adopted in France, and by Morton in America.

Dr. J. Aitken Meigs[^[20]] pointed out that as early as 1553 the measurement of the head appears to have exercised the ingenuity of Albert Dürer, who, in his De Symmetriâ Partium in Rectis Formis Humanorum Corporum, has given such measurements in almost every view. These, however, are more artistic in their tendency and scope than scientific. A glance at some of the outline drawings of Dürer shows incontestably that the facial line and angle were not wholly unknown to him, and that Camper has rather elaborated than invented this method of cranial measurement. The artist even seems to have entertained more philosophical views of cephalometry, or head measurement, than the professor.

[20]. North American Med.-Chir. Rev., 1861, p. 840.

Various Early Craniologists.

The evolution of craniometrical measurements is of interest to the physical anthropologist, but even a brief recital of this progress would weary the non-specialist. A history of Anthropology would, however, not be complete if it ignored the general trend of such investigations.

Some of the early workers, such as Daubenton (1716-99) and Mulder, Walther, Barclay, and Serres in the first half of the nineteenth century, attempted to express the relation between the brain-case and the face by some simple measurement or method of comparison in their endeavour to formulate not only the differences between the races of mankind, but also those which obtain between men and the lower animals.

Others during the same period investigated the relations and proportions of portions of the skull to the whole by means of lines. Spix (1815) adopted five lines. Herder employed a series of lines radiating from the atlas (the uppermost bone of the vertebral column); but, more generally, the meatus auditorius (ear-hole) was the starting-point (Doornik, 1815).

The internal capacity of the skull first received attention from Tiedemann (1836), who determined it by filling the skull with millet seed and then ascertaining the weight of the seed. Morton first used white pepper seed, which he discarded later for No. 8 shot, while Volkoff employed water. Modifications in the use of these three media—seeds, shot, and water—are still employed by craniologists.

The most noteworthy names among the earlier workers in craniology are those of Retzius and Grattan. Anders Retzius (1796-1860) correlated the schemes of Blumenbach and Camper, and so arrived at the methods of craniological measurements which are almost universally in use at the present day.

Cephalic Index of Retzius.

In 1840 he introduced his theory regarding cranial shapes to the Academy of Science at Stockholm, and two years later gave a course of lectures on the same subject. He criticised the results attained by Blumenbach, showing that his group contains varying types of skull form; and he invented the cephalic index, or length-breadth index—i.e., the ratio of the breadth of a skull to its length, expressed as a per-centage. The narrower skulls he termed dolichocephalic, the broader ones brachycephalic. By this method Retzius designed rather to arrange the forms of crania than to classify thereby the races of mankind, though he tried to group the European peoples more or less according to their head-form. While thus elaborating the suggestion of Blumenbach, he also recorded the degree of the projection of the jaws, demonstrated by Camper, and he added the measurements of the face, height, and jugular breadth. Thus was Craniology established on its present lines.

Grattan.

John Grattan (1800-1871), the Belfast apothecary, has never received the recognition that was his due. Having undertaken to describe the numerous ancient Irish skulls collected by his friend Edmund Getty, he soon became impressed by the absence of

that uniformity of method and that numerical precision without which no scientific investigation requiring the co-operation of numerous observers can be successfully prosecuted. The mode of procedure hitherto adopted furnishes to the mind nothing but vague generalities ... until we can record with something approaching towards accuracy the proportional development of the great subdivisions of the brain, as indicated by its bony covering, and by our figures convey to the mind determinate ideas of the relation they bear towards each other, we shall not be in a position to do justice to our materials.... No single cranium can per se be taken to represent the true average characteristics of the variety from which it may be derived. It is only from a large deduction that the ethnologist can venture to pronounce with confidence upon the normal type of any race.[^[21]]

[21]. J. Grattan, Ulster Journal of Arch., 1858.

Grattan devised a series of radial measurements from the meatus auditorius, and constructed an ingenious craniometer. As Professor J. Symington points out, “Grattan’s work was almost cotemporaneous with that of Anders Retzius, and nearly all of it was done before the German and French Schools had elaborated their schemes of skull measurements.”[^[22]] He adopted the most useful of the measurements then existing, and added new ones of his own devising.

[22]. Proc. Belfast Nat. Hist. and Phil. Soc., 1903-4; and Journ. Anat. and Phys.

The distinguished American physician and physiologist Dr. J. Aitken Meigs laid down the principles that “Cranial measurements to be of practical use should be both absolute and relative. Absolute measurements are necessary to demonstrate those anatomical differences between the crania of different races which assume a great zoological significance in proportion to their constancy. By relative measurements of the head we obtain an approximate idea of the peculiar physiological character of the enclosed brain ... the craniographer, in fact, becomes the cranioscopist” (1861, p. 857). In this paper Meigs gives craniometrical directions, some of which were designed to give measurements for portions of the brain.

Broca.

In France the greatest names are those of Broca, Topinard, and de Quatrefages. Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880) was first destined for the army, but when the death of his sister left him the only child he was unwilling to leave his parents, and resolved to study medicine and share the work of his father, an eminent physician. He soon distinguished himself, especially in surgery, not only in practical work, but also in his writings. With regard to the latter, Dr. Pozzi, in a memoir, says of him: “There is hardly one of the subjects in which he did not at the first stroke make a discovery, great or small; there is not one on which he has not left the mark of his originality.”[^[23]]

[23]. J.A.I., x., 1881, p. 243.

Paul Broca.

In 1847 he was appointed to serve on a Commission to report on some excavations in the cemetery of the Celestins, and this led him to study craniology, and thence to ethnology, in which his interest, once aroused, never flagged. The story of the formation of the Société d’anthropologie de Paris (1859) and of l’École d’anthropologie (1876), of both of which Broca was the moving spirit, affords a curious commentary on the suspicion in which Anthropology was held. To the success of the School he devoted all his energies, and during many years of anxiety he met and overcame all obstacles, surmounted all difficulties, wore down all opposition, and finally placed it in a secure position. He invented several instruments for the more accurate study of craniology, such as the occipital crochet, goniometer, and stereograph, and also standardised methods; but, dissatisfied with the inconclusiveness of mere cranial comparisons, he turned towards the end of his life to the study of the brain. He was an indefatigable worker, and his sudden death in his fifty-sixth year is attributed to cerebral exhaustion.

“Broca was a man,” said Dr. Beddoe, “who positively radiated science and the love of science; no one could associate with him without catching a portion of the sacred flame. Topinard has been the Elisha of this Elijah.”[^[24]]

[24]. Anniversary Address, Anth. Inst., 1891.

Topinard.

Paul Topinard, pupil, colleague, and friend of Broca, made valuable investigations on the living population of France, besides devoting much time to anthropometrical studies; but his greatest service has been the preparation and publication of l’Anthropologie (1876), a guide for students and a manual of reference for travellers and others, voicing the idea of Broca and his school, and “elucidating in a single volume a series of vast dimensions, in process of rapid development.” In 1885 he published his classic Eléments d’anthropologie générale,[^[25]] which aimed at creating a new atmosphere for the science, breaking free from the traditions of the monogenists and polygenists, and incorporating the new ideas spread by Darwin and Haeckel.

[25]. General Anthropology, according to Topinard’s classification, is concerned merely with man as an animal, and deals with anatomy and physiology, pathology, and psychology.

De Quatrefages.

Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (1810-92) was not only a distinguished zoologist, occupying himself mainly with certain groups of marine animals, but also Professor of Anthropology at the Paris Museum of Natural History, and undertook several voyages along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in search of information. In 1867 he published Rapport sur le progrès de l’Anthropologie, “which reduces to a complete and intelligible system the abstruse and difficult, and, to many, the incomprehensible science of anthropology, embracing during his investigations a wide range of topics, and arranging disjointed facts in due order, so as at once to evince their bearing upon the subject.”[^[26]] He published many other works, among them Les Pygmées (1887), L’espèce humaine (1877), Histoire générale des races humaines (1889), and, together with E. T. Hamy, the famous Crania ethnica (1875-79). Professor F. Starr, in the preface to his translation of The Pygmies (1895), says:—

[26]. Anth. Rev., 1869, p. 231.

A man of strong convictions and very conservative, de Quatrefages was ever ready to hear the other side, and ever candid and kindly in argument. He was one of the first to support the Society of Anthropology. Those who know the story of the early days of that great association understand what that means. When the claim for man’s antiquity was generally derided, de Quatrefages championed the cause. A monogenist [p. [53]], a believer in the extreme antiquity of our race, he was never won over by any of the proposed theories of evolution.... To the very end of a long life our author lived happily and busily active among his books and specimens.

Virchow.

In Germany the greatest name is that of Virchow. Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (1821-1902) had already gained fame in the medical world, especially with regard to histology, pathology, and the study of epidemics, and was the prime leader in the “Medizinische Reform” movement before he began his valuable contributions to the science of Anthropology.

His first anthropological writings were some papers on cretinism (1851 and 1852), and from this date onwards his services to the science can scarcely be over-estimated. Much of his energy was also given to somatic anthropology, and in 1866 he started his investigations into prehistoric archæology, combining scientific method with spade-work.

In a notice of his work by Oscar Israel[^[27]] (p. 656) we read:—

[27]. Smithsonian Report, 1902. Translated from the Deutsche Rundschau of Dec., 1902.

Virchow devoted himself to ethnographic studies no less than to other branches of anthropology, and here he became a center to which the material streamed from all sides, and from which went forth suggestion, criticism, and energetic assistance. This never-idle man did not disdain to teach travelers schooled in other lines of investigation the anthropometric methods; and, indeed, he found time for everything, and never left a piece of work to others that he could possibly do himself. Thus, for example, for ten years following its inception by him in 1876, he worked up alone the data recorded in German schools as to the color of the eyes, the hair, and the skin which has proved of such value for the knowledge of the different branches of the German race.

Sergi.

Professor Sergi at one time proposed to banish measurements from craniology, and to rely solely on observational methods. He has later modified his extreme position, while, as a result of his crusade, he has induced most anthropologists to pay more attention to the configuration of the skull, and some of his descriptive terms have come into common use.

Hagen’s Criticism of Craniometry.

Dr. Hagen relates the extreme specialisation into which craniologists were led:—

A rage for skull measurements, vast, vigorous, and heedless, set in on all sides, especially after Lucae had discovered and perfected a method of accurately representing the irregular form of the object studied. “More skulls” was henceforth the war-cry; the trunk, extremities, soft tissues, skin and hair, might all go by the board, being counted of no scientific value whatever. Anthropologists, or those who aspired to the title, measured and delineated skulls; museums became veritable cities of skulls, and the reputation of a scientific traveller almost stood or fell with the number of crania which he brought back with him.

After two decades of measuring and collecting ever greater quantities of material from foreign lands, and from the so-called primitive or aboriginal races, the inadequacy of Retzius’s method became apparent. Far too many intermediate forms were met with, which it was found absolutely impossible to classify by its means. In accordance with the suggestion of the French anthropologist Broca, and of Welcker, Professor of Anatomy at Halle, a third type, the so-called Mesocephalic form, was interposed between the two forms recognised by Retzius. Even this did not suffice, however. In the face of the infinite variety of form of the crania now massed together, a variety only comparable to that of leaves in a forest, this primitively simple scheme, with its four and finally six types, failed through lack of elasticity. Then began complication extending ever further and further. Attention was no longer confined to the length and breadth, but also to the height of the cranium, high and low (or flat) skulls—i.e., hypsicephalic and chamaecephalic varieties being recognised. The facial part of the skull was examined not only from the side, with a view to recording the straightness or obliquity of the profile, but also from the front; and there were thus distinguished long, medium, and short faces, and also broad and narrow facial types. The nasal skeleton, the palate, the orbit, the teeth, and the mandible were investigated in turn, and at last all the individual bones of the cranium and face, their irregularities of outline, and their relations to one another, were subjected to the closest examination and most subtle measurements, with instruments of extreme delicacy of construction and ingenuity of design, till, finally, the trifling number of five thousand measurements for every skull found an advocate in the person of the Hungarian Professor V. Török (whereby the wealth of detail obscured the main objects of study); while, on the other hand, observers deviated into scientific jugglery, like that of the Italian Professor Sergi, who contrived to recognise within the limits of a single small archipelago, the D’Entrecasteaux group of islets near New Guinea, as many as eleven cranial varieties, which were all distinguished by high-sounding descriptive names, such as Lophocephalus brachyclitometopus, etc.

Macalister’s Criticism of Craniometry.

The misuse of Craniometry is also described by Professor Alexander Macalister[^[28]]:—

[28]. Presidential Address to Section H., Brit. Ass., 1892.

Despite all the labour that has been bestowed on the subject, craniometric literature is at present as unsatisfactory as it is dull. Hitherto observations have been concentrated on cranial measurements as methods for the discrimination of the skulls of different races. Scores of lines, arcs, chords, and indexes have been devised for this purpose, and the diagnosis of skulls has been attempted by a process as mechanical as that whereby we identify certain issues of postage-stamps by counting the nicks in the margin. But there is underlying all these no unifying hypothesis; so that when we, in our sesquipedalian jargon, describe an Australian skull as microcephalic, phænozygous, tapeino-dolichocephalic, prognathic, platyrhine, hypselopalatine, leptostaphyline, dolichuranic, chamaeprosopic, and microseme, we are no nearer to the formulation of any philosophic concept of the general principles which have led to the assumption of these characters by the cranium in question, and we are forced to echo the apostrophe of Von Török, “Vanity, thy name is Craniology.”

It is significant that so many of the earlier craniologists recognised that the really important problem before them was to gain a knowledge of the size and relative proportions of the various regions of the brain, this being a direct result of the phrenological studies then so much in vogue. When phrenology became discredited, this aspect of craniometry was largely neglected; but recently it has exhibited signs of a healthy revival, and the inner surface of the cranium is now regarded as more instructive than the outer.

Though for a time craniology was hailed as the magic formula by which alone all ethnological tangles could be unravelled, measurements of other parts of the body were not ignored by those who recognised that no one measurement was sufficient to determine racial affinities.

Anthropometry.

Thus Anthropometry began to map out definite lines of research, and detailed studies were made of arms and legs, hands and feet, curves and angles, brains and viscera; while, shorn of its extravagant claims, craniology took its legitimate place as one in a series of bodily measurements. One of the earliest workers in measurements other than that of the skull was Charles White (1728-1813).

His contribution to Somatology was a series of measurements on arms; and he discovered that the fore-arm of the Negro is longer, in comparison with his upper-arm, than that of the European, and that that of the Ape is relatively longer than that of the Negro. On account of these measurements on the living (no less than fifty Negroes were measured), White has been claimed as the founder of Anthropometry. Soemmerring (1755-1830), however, had made use of measurements in his comparison of the anatomy of the Negro with the European.

Measurements and Observations of Living Populations.

About the middle of the nineteenth century observations on the living were made, in addition to Anthropometry; investigations were undertaken, not of the skulls and bones of the dead, or even of the head-forms and body-measurements of the living, but of the forms of such features as the nose and ear, pigmentation of the skin and eyes, and the like. As early as 1834 L. R. Villermé had started investigations on the various classes of the population of Great Britain, comparing the dwellers in the country with those of manufacturing districts and large cities, mainly in the interests of hygiene; and later he examined the size and health of children working in coal-mines.

In 1861 the venerated Dr. John Beddoe published a study of hair and eye colour in Ireland, and he has continued his researches in this fruitful field from time to time in various parts of the British Isles, and to a less extent on the continent of Europe.

But it was on the continent that this method of investigation was most ardently prosecuted; and the story of its political origin may here be briefly recounted, since the results were of great service to the science of Anthropometry.

During the bombardment of Paris, in the Franco-Prussian War, the Natural History Museum suffered some damage through shells; and soon afterwards the director, de Quatrefages, published a pamphlet on La Race Prussienne (1871). This was to show that the Prussians were not Teutonic at all, but were descended from the Finns, who were classed with the Lapps as alien Mongolian intruders into Europe. They were thus mere barbarians, with a hatred of a culture they could not appreciate; and their object in shelling the museum was “to take from this Paris that they execrate, from this Babylon that they curse, one of its elements of superiority and attraction. Hence our collections were doomed to perish.” A reply was made by Professor Virchow, of Berlin, and the battle raged furiously. The significance of this controversy to Anthropometry lies in the fact that its immediate result was an order from the German Government authorising an official census of the colour of the hair and eyes of 6,000,000 school children of the Empire—a census which served at once as a stimulus to and a model for further investigators.

This census had some amusing and unexpected results, quoted by Dr. Tylor[^[29]] as illustrating the growth of legends:—

[29]. Pres. Add. Brit. Ass., 1879.

No doubt many legends of the ancient world, though not really history, are myths which have arisen by reasoning on actual events, as definite as that which, some four years ago, was terrifying the peasant mind in North Germany, and especially in Posen. The report had spread far and wide that all Catholic children with black hair and blue eyes were to be sent out of the country, some said to Russia; while others declared that it was the King of Prussia who had been playing cards with the Sultan of Turkey, and had staked and lost 40,000 fair-haired, blue-eyed children; and there were Moors travelling about in covered carts to collect them; and the schoolmasters were helping, for they were to have five dollars for every child they handed over. For a time popular excitement was quite serious; the parents kept their children away from school and hid them, and when they appeared in the streets of the market town the little ones clung to them with terrified looks.... One schoolmaster, who evidently knew his people, assured the terrified parents that it was only the children with blue hair and green eyes that were wanted—an explanation that sent them home quite comforted.

Observations of external characters, combined with precise measurements, have now been made on a large scale in most European countries, and these methods are adopted on anthropological expeditions. In this way a great deal of valuable material for study has been accumulated, but much work remains to be done in this direction.

Methods of Dealing with Anthropometric Data.

Not only have head, body, and limb measurements been recorded, but the device of an “index” has been adopted which gives the ratio between two measurements, as, for example, in the previously-mentioned cephalic index (p. [34]). The averages or means of series of indices obtained from one people have been compared with those obtained from other peoples; but this method is misleading, as there is frequently a very considerable range in any given series, and a mean merely gives a colourless conception of racial types, the only value of which is a ready standard of comparison, which, however, is full of pitfalls.

A further step in the advancement of anthropometric research was made when the extent and frequency of such deviations from the mean were recorded. At first this was done in a tabular manner by means of seriations; then curves were employed: a single peak was held to indicate purity of race, double peaks that two racial elements entered into the series measured, a broad peak or plateau was interpreted as being due to race fusion. Dr. C. S. Myers,[^[30]] who has discussed these and other methods, points out the fallacies of this interpretation, saying: “There can be little doubt that most of the many-peaked curves owe their irregularity to the inadequate number of individual measurements which have been taken.”

[30]. C. S. Myers, “The Future of Anthropometry,” Journ. Anth. Inst., xxxiii., 1903, p. 36.

Dr. Myers emphatically states:—

If physical anthropology is to be a science, its results must be capable of expression in mathematical formulæ. To this end some of the most interesting of biological work of the age is tending ... generally speaking, the study of living forms is passing from the descriptive to the quantitative aspect, and it is by experiment and observation on biometrical lines that future progress is clearly promised.... Thanks to the recent work of Professor Karl Pearson, the proper start has at last been made.

His school is now attacking by statistical methods the problem of the dependence of the variation of one character upon that of another. It should be remembered that Quetelet was the first to apply the Gaussian Law of Error to human measurements in its elementary binomial form; in this he was followed by Sir Francis Galton, who was the first in this country to realise the importance of applying mathematical methods to anthropological measurements and observations. An interesting account of the genesis of his work in this direction is given in his Memories of My Life (1908). Similar work has also been undertaken by German investigators.

Scientific and Practical Value of Anthropometry.

We may conclude this chapter with a brief summary of the main lines which investigations are now taking; but it is impossible to mention even the more important of recent workers in this vast field.

From the beginning of the study, anthropometry was employed as a precise means of expressing the differences between man and the lower animals; and, owing to improved methods of research and the discovery of new material, the origin and differentiation of man is still investigated with assiduity.

Though no one measurement can be used for purposes of race discrimination, yet a series of measurements on a sufficiently large group of subjects, together with observations on the colour of the skin, hair, and eyes, the form of various organs—such as the nose and ears—and other comparisons of a similar nature, are invaluable in the study of the races of mankind. It is only in this way that the mixtures of the population can be sorted out, their origins traced, and some idea gained of the racial migrations which have taken place since man first appeared.

Through the initiative of Sir Francis Galton, as Dr. Myers points out, anthropometry has begun to investigate other problems which must ultimately be of ethnological interest; and he has opened out the whole subject of heredity, which eventually must enter into every branch of physical anthropology. The followers of Mendel are at present laying a foundation upon their experiments with plants and animals. At present very little attention has been paid by them to man; nor, probably, can much be attempted until more precise data are available.

Lamentably little is known with accuracy about the physical and psychical effects of the mixture of different human types, and it is yet to be determined how far the admitted unsatisfactory character of many half-caste populations is due to physiological or sociological causes.

There is a great dearth of sufficiently numerous and reliable observations and statistics concerning the effect of the environment upon small or large groups of human beings—a problem to which Professor Ridgeway devoted his last presidential address to the Royal Anthropological Institute (1910).

It is often important that the physical fitness of people should be tested, in order to see how they stand in relation to other people, and to discover any physical imperfections. Especially is this desirable in the case of children; and the government inspection of school children, though inadequate, is a step in the right direction. By such means early inclinations to various defects are discovered and prevented, and valuable statistics are obtained which can not only be utilised for comparative purposes, but may form a basis for future legislation. It is also a matter of importance to determine whether certain imperfections are due to diseased, abnormal, or other undesirable factors in their parentage; or whether they are the results of unfavourable subsequent conditions. But in order that comparisons can be made, it is necessary to make similar investigations on the normal, capable, and healthy population.

Another branch of investigation was undertaken mainly for the identification of criminals, and consisted in certain measurements selected by M. Alphonse Bertillon, supplemented by photographs and a record of individual peculiarities. The practical value of this method of identification in France was demonstrated by its immediate results. Criminals began to leave off aliases, and numbers of them flocked to England. Finger-prints as a means of identification were first discovered by Purkenje, the Breslau physiologist (1823), who utilised them for classification. Sir William Herschel, of the Indian Civil Service, adopted the method in Bengal, and now methods introduced by Sir Francis Galton are in use in India, England, and elsewhere, having in most cases supplanted the Bertillon system.

Chapter III.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES

Next to geographical discovery, perhaps the most stimulating influence on Anthropology has been the succession of controversies in which it has constantly been involved. It has always been regarded as a somewhat anarchical subject, advocating views which might prove dangerous to Church and State; and many are the battles which have raged within and without. Huxley attributed the large audiences which were wont to throng the Anthropological Section of the British Association to the innate bellicose instincts of man, and to the splendid opportunities afforded by Anthropology for indulging those propensities.[^[31]]

[31]. Add. Brit. Ass., Dublin, 1878.

The discussions of the earlier centuries were focussed round the question of the origin of man, and from this highly debateable problem arose the two antagonistic groups of the monogenists, or orthodox school, deriving all mankind from a single pair, and the polygenists, who believed in a multiple origin. Before the discoveries of prehistoric archæology had advanced sufficiently to show the futility of such discussion, anthropologists were split up into opposing camps by the question of the fixity of species, and became embroiled in one of the fiercest controversies of modern times—that of evolution. A subordinate subject of contention, implicated in the polygenist doctrines, was the place of the Negro in nature, involving the question of slavery.

Origin of Man.

Among the ancient philosophers the question of the origin of man was answered in various ways; some, like Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, believed that mankind had always existed, because there never could have been a beginning of things, relying on the scholastic argument that no bird could be born without an egg, and no egg without a bird. Epicurus and Lucretius believed in a “fortuitous cause,” a preparation of fat and slimy earth, with a long incubation of water and conjunction of heavenly and planetary bodies. Others, that men and animals “crawled out of the earth by chance,” “like mushrooms or blite.”

With the spread of Christianity the Mosaic cosmogony became generally adopted, and monogenism developed into an article of faith. The Church fulminated against those atheists who admitted doubts on the subject of Adam and Eve, or believed in the existence of antipodal man, or that man had existed for more than the 6,000 years allotted to him by Scripture. If the censure of the Church did not lead to recantation, the heretic was burnt. A seventeenth-century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, was even more precise than Archbishop Ussher: he reached the conclusion that “man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning.”[^[32]]

[32]. Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution, quoting from White, Warfare of Science with Theology.

The discovery of the New World dealt a severe blow to the authority of the Fathers on matters of science. Antipodal man, whom St. Augustine[^[33]] had extinguished as “excessively absurd,” was found to exist, and the Spaniards forthwith excused their barbarities to the American natives on the plea that they were not the descendants of Adam and Eve.

[33]. De Civitate Dei.

Polygenism and Monogenism.